Mostly Un-monitored Ramblings (EOD drafts, Scratch Paper, and Message Dump)

[Mr. Lime]

Probably not canon

Case Officer Slate was currently in a hospital bed when the latest briefs were delivered to him. Senior Agent Lime was last seen on Manhattan. His current location is unknown. We take you now to live footage of Slate’s hospital room.

… we’ll be right back.

Liberty Security Force
Department of War Operations Planning

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Yeah. Sure. A case of beer.

What Slate can do, sorry, I’ve read his mail when I visited him in the hospital, is give me more agents. I’m likely about to be the point of contact between our forces and the entire Dragon-aligned Kusari underworld. I am already arranging an appetizer of heavy arms for them, and the main course is going to be a real treat. My on-site analysis has determined them to be more in need of resources than they might let on; as the Sisterhood has lost their point of semi-legitimate commerce of meaningful scale in Roppongi and Noshima takes all comers, Dragons included, we have been afforded a great opportunity to supplant some of the main perpetrators of the Manhattan Abductions^[1] in a foreign underground market notoriously difficult to break into.

I am prepared to move forward with Cowra, Saint John is dependent upon negotiations further upstream, and may result in more unwanted attention than our agency might like.

I know, I know. Projects that weren’t in the brief. I promise you can read all about them once they’re in an executive summary format. Slate had them written up for me to send me back to the Sigmas. I’m starting to think he doesn’t want me in Liberty proper.

Our agency’s immediate message blackout is slated to end Tuesday, from the look of things, I’ll have a lot of backlog to catch up on.

Lime.

[1] The Manhattan Abductions were a mass kidnapping of a large swathe of Manhattan high society. LPI’s easy bribery allowed for small fleets of freighters to regularly land and move kidnapped VIPs to transports waiting in orbit. Freelancer Bustards hooked up to Jump Drives, Cryer Storks^[2], and a surprisingly large fleet of varied Golden Chrysanthemum transports dealt a brisk trade. The latter could only deliver to Malta, and are likely to have caused an uptick in addictions estimated at 40% above reported^[3], if the ransomed VIPs were even returned at all. Several thousand of Manhattan’s finest yet remain unaccounted for.
[2] Representative Quayle claims this to be baseless rumors, however multiple suspicious convoys of Cryer ships were seen around the known atmospheric entry point. As the damage done was mostly to Interspace, as most such kidnap victims ended up on Crete, a notoriously anti-drug world, it is unlikely that Cryer was officially involved as a way to drive up its Stabiline sales. We are therefore assuming that these were opportunistic Cryer employees who were smuggling from Crete anyway and wanted something a little more profitable than guns.
[3] We are unable at this time to accurately estimate how many such VIPs were already addicted to Cardamine at the time of their kidnapping. For the sake of the good names of them and their families, we are to assume on all official documentation that the kidnappers got them hooked on it.

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And scrawled on the scratch paper…

We have taken the liberty of deciphering the pictographs and coded language for a non headache-inducing reading experience. The originals have since been burned.

They made off with a bunch of good kids from good families, and we’re now stuck with a bunch of the people who are supposed to be in charge having to keep taking Cardamine or die. Stabiline is for Houston and PR stunts, don’t tell Arch I said that, but he’d probably agree with me.

What I am about to tell you isn’t exactly a secret, but if we ever admitted it, everyone in the Agency would be given a cell on the Fairbanks, to share.

The reason we get this level of budget isn’t to combat the Cardamine trade. Not anymore. Not after so much of the elite were exposed to the orange powder from Malta. Operation Saint John is what we are forced to do to keep Liberty’s best and brightest at their best. Slate is right. I hate his guts, but he’s right. As our agency depends upon their good graces, it is our task to ensure their welfare, and Stabiline’s side-effects are currently too… discomforting for the people whose interests we prosecute.

As of four years ago, we have no choice but to ensure a stable delivery of Cardamine to Liberty’s borders, under our supervision. Our hand was forced then, and the Blackout as well as the destruction of Atka has only made the problem worse.

The people in charge don’t care if half of Manhattan was already tweaking on Cardi before, but now one is hard-pressed to find a family that didn’t have a “poor baby kidnapped and taken to Malta, his life is ruined”. The quiet cardamine abuse could have gone on indefinitely, but the mass kidnappings and the victims being delivered to Cardamine Central has several of our most prominent families wanting to have very public revenge against the kidnappers. This has been forced into the open and a lot of good families have lost face because of it. Everyone knows full well a lot of those people were already abusing Cardi, but they can now afford to be a bit more open about it because “those horrible sniffers forced us to breathe it in”. As Stabiline’s effects are unpleasant, the courses provided to the kidnap victims are likely supplemented if not outright replaced by resumed Cardamine consumption. The current turf wars ongoing between the Junkers, Xenos, Lane Hackers, and Rogues see reduced quantities all over Liberty. To protect our most important citizens, the LSF must control the Cardamine trade in Liberty, and likely beyond, so these petty turf wars do not interfere with intake outside of accepted extremes.

Agent to be transferred to oversee Operation Saint John exclusively. Redbelly and Gannett to be overseen by FA. Cherry, Kanagawa by Cyan. Cowra will be your last operation anywhere near Liberty for the foreseeable future. Make no overt moves against the Golden Chrysanthemums at this time, DOWOP says they may be local entrepreneurs able to ensure any Cardamine-addicted personnel receive prompt supplies while on deployment within Kusari.

On a personal note, I am beyond disappointed with the way you’ve been handling yourself lately.

I love you too, Clark.